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Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper is the name given to an unidentified serial killer. He was active during the summer and autumn of 1888 in the Whitechapel district of London, England, which was known for its overpopulation and prostitution.
The victims[change | change source]
The main victims thought to be killed by the Ripper were five prostitutes:
- Mary Ann Nichols - 43 years old (31 August)
- Annie Chapman - 47 years old (8 September)
- Elizabeth Stride - 44 years old (30 September)
- Catherine Eddowes - 46 years old (30 September)
- Mary Jane Kelly - 25 years old (9 November)
Newspapers and police in London around this time started to get taunting letters. The letters were signed "Jack the Ripper". Other murders were reported around the same time, but were not thought to be done by Jack the Ripper. He was also known to have sex with his victims before he killed them.
Who was Jack the Ripper?[change | change source]
Nobody knows who Jack the Ripper really was. Some think he might have been a doctor or a butcher because of how he killed and cut up the women, much like how a surgeon might perform surgery, or how a butcher might dissect an animal. All the murders happened on weekends, so it could have been someone who did not live in London but visited the city on weekends, or someone who worked during the week and was only free at the weekends. In September 2014, a research group claimed that it had identified Jack the Ripper as a 23-year old Jewish immigrant from Central Europe named Aaron Kosminski.[1]
Some of Jack the Ripper's murders[change | change source]
The Ripper was famous for the brutality of his murders. He often mutilated his victims, usually killing them by slashing their throats open, almost to the point of decapitation, and stabbing them multiple times, especially in the abdomen. At about 23:00 on 30 August, Mary Ann Nichols was seen walking the Whitechapel Road; at 00:30 she was seen to leave a pub in Brick Lane, Spitalfields. An hour later, she was turned out of 18 Thrawl Street as she was lacking fourpence for a bed, implying by her last words that she would soon earn the money on the street with the help of a new bonnet she had acquired. She was later seen at the corner of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road, at 02:30, an hour before her death, by Nelly Holland. Nichols claimed she had made enough money to pay for her bed three times over, but had drunk it all away, it was the last time she was seen alive. An hour later, she was found lying dead in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck's Row (since renamed Durward Street), Whitechapel, her throat cut and her abdomen ripped open. Nobody had seen or heard a thing, the killer struck again on 8 September, Annie Chapman was seen talking to a man at about 5:30 a.m. just beyond the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. Mrs. Long described him as over forty, and a little taller than Chapman, of dark complexion, and of foreign, "shabby-genteel" appearance. He was wearing a deer-stalker hat and dark overcoat, carpenter Albert Cadosch had entered the neighbouring yard at 27 Hanbury Street seconds later, and heard voices in the yard followed by the sound of something falling against the fence. Chapman's body was discovered at just before 6:00 a.m. on the morning of 8 September 1888 by a resident of number 29, market porter John Davis. She was lying on the ground near a doorway in the back yard. Her throat was cut from left to right, and she had been disembowelled, with her intestines thrown out of her abdomen over each of her shoulders. The morgue examination revealed that part of her uterus was missing. Chapman's protruding tongue and swollen face led Dr Phillips to think that she may have been asphyxiated with the handkerchief around her neck before her throat was cut.
Letters[change | change source]
"Dear Boss"[change | change source]
Two weeks later, a letter was sent claimed to have been written by the killer himself. The letter, received on September 27 1888, was signed "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper." The law enforcement and newspapers referred to him as the Ripper from that point on. The letter read:
Dear Boss,
I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn't you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck. Yours truly
Jack the Ripper
Dont mind me giving the trade name
PS Wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now. ha ha[2]
"From Hell"[change | change source]
From Hell letter was received by George Lusk, leader of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, on 16 October 1888. The handwriting and style is unlike that of the "Dear Boss" letter and postcard. The letter came with a small box in which Lusk discovered half of a kidney, preserved in "spirits of wine" (ethanol). Eddowes' left kidney had been removed by the killer. The writer claimed that he "fried and ate" the missing kidney half. There is disagreement over the kidney: some contend it belonged to Eddowes, while others argue it was nothing more than a macabre practical joke. The kidney was examined by Dr Thomas Openshaw of the London Hospital, who determined that it was human and from the left side, but (contrary to false newspaper reports) he could not determine its gender or age. Openshaw subsequently also received a letter signed "Jack the Ripper".
Double murders[change | change source]
Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were killed in the early morning of Sunday 30 September 1888. Stride's body was discovered at about 1 a.m., in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (now Henriques Street) in Whitechapel. The cause of death was one clear-cut incision which severed the main artery on the left side of the neck. Uncertainty about whether Stride's murder should be attributed to the Ripper, or whether he was interrupted during the attack, stems from the absence of mutilations to the abdomen. Witnesses who said they saw Stride with a man earlier that night gave differing descriptions: some said her companion was fair, others dark; some said he was shabbily dressed, others well-dressed. Eddowes' body was found in Mitre Square, in the City of London, three-quarters of an hour after Stride's. The throat was severed, and the abdomen was ripped open by a long, deep, jagged wound. The left kidney and the major part of the uterus had been removed. A local man, Joseph Lawende, had passed through the square with two friends shortly before the murder, and he described seeing a fair-haired man of shabby appearance with a woman who may have been Eddowes. His companions, however, were unable to confirm his description. Eddowes' and Stride's murders were later called the "double event". Part of Eddowes' bloodied apron was found at the entrance to a tenement in Goulston Street, Whitechapel. Some writing on the wall above the apron piece, which became known as the Goulston Street graffito, seemed to implicate a Jew or Jews, but it was unclear whether the graffito was written by the murderer as he dropped the apron piece, or merely incidental.Police Commissioner Charles Warren feared the graffito might spark antisemitic riots, and ordered it washed away before dawn. The "Saucy Jacky" postcard was postmarked 1 October 1888 and received the same day by the Central News Agency. The handwriting was similar to the "Dear Boss" letter. It mentions that two victims were killed very close to one another: "double event this time", which was thought to refer to the murders of Stride and Eddowes. It has been argued that the letter was mailed before the murders were publicised, making it unlikely that a crank would have such knowledge of the crime, but it was postmarked more than 24 hours after the killings took place, long after details were known by journalists and residents of the area.
The end of the crimes[change | change source]
Mary Jane Kelly was seen with a man of "Jewish appearance". Kelly and the man headed for her room at 13 Miller's Court, Elizabeth Prater, who was woken by her kitten walking over her neck, and Sarah Lewis both reported hearing a faint cry of "Murder!" at about 4:00 a.m., but did not react because they reported that it was common to hear such cries in the East End. She claimed not to have slept and to have heard people moving in and out of the court throughout the night. She thought she heard someone leaving the residence at about 5:45 a.m. Kelly's gruesomely mutilated body was discovered the next morning lying on the bed at 10:45 a.m. on Friday 9 November 1888. The throat had been severed down to the spine, and the abdomen virtually emptied of its organs. The heart was missing.
After the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, the Ripper murders stopped suddenly. The identity of Jack the Ripper is unknown. Although many historians have different opinions and theories on who Jack the Ripper was, it will probably never be known who he was.
References[change | change source]
- ↑ "'Jack the Ripper was Polish barber called Aaron Kosminski', new book claims". The Independent.com. Retrieved September 7, 2014.
- ↑ Casebook: Jack the Ripper article on the Ripper letters


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A member of the studio audience has provided me with a long question that I think can be summarized as a request to a particular species of social controversy - the conflict between environmental concerns and development concerns.
It is about conflicts like that between the defenders of the spotted owl and the lumberjacks, or between the defenders of the snail darter and the dam builders.
Before I get into the specifics of this debate, I want to note that desirism does not come with a set of commandments. It does not belong in the same genus as libertarianism, communism, objectivism, humanism, or most (if not all) theisms, each of which provides its members with a list of thou shalts and thou shalt nots. It is, instead, a theory of how to evaluate commandments - a theory that says that there is a fact of the matter, but it does not dictate any particular fact.
This is like the relationship between the scientific method and any particular scientific claim. Using the scientific method, we learn that the earth is 4.5 billion years old. However, the scientific method itself does not dictate this conclusion. The earth might have turned out (and still might turn out) to be of some other age. Yet, the way that this will be determined is through the application of the scientific method.
So, desirism does not dictate an answer in the environment vs. development debate. I may argue for one or the other - employing desirism in making my moral arguments. However, it will always be possible for somebody else to come along and say, "Though desirism is true, your application of desirism to this specific case is flawed."
Desirism tells us to focus on desires.
In the environmentalism versus development debate, a relevant desire may be a desire that the snail darter or the spotted owl continue to exist. This is the desire motivating one group of people to preserve the snail darter or the spotted owl and, in doing so, stop development.
Is this a good desire, or a bad desire?
Another relevant set of desires focus on earning a paycheck by cutting down trees or building a dam - or that center around using the lumber or the power that results from those activities. The desire for a paycheck is typically a means-desire. The paycheck is not a goal in itself - it is a means for acquiring food, shelter, medical care, and the like. The desire for power and for flood control in the case of the dam is also substantially an interest in their usefulness.
Of course, as a means, we may ask whether there are other means that are just as effective. Are there not other forests to cut down? Are there not other ways to get the power or to control flooding?
The availability of substitutes becomes an important part of the debate on this model. It tells us how much the fulfillment of desires actually depend on this particular activity.
The desire that the snail darter continue to exist may be defended as a manifestation of a more general desire for environmental preservation.
A general desire for environmental preservation can be defended as a way of preventing something like the Easter Island scenario from happening on a global scale.
A group of Polynesians landed on and colonized Easter Island about 1000 years ago or more. Research tells us that, at the time, the island was heavily forested and rich in plant and animal life. These new settlers started to harvest the trees. The resulting deforestation changed the local climate. Easter Island lost not only its forests, but also its ability to support most food crops. The population of the island dropped by 80% within a century. Starvation and famine kept the population down.
Clearly, people generally have many and strong reasons to avoid this fate on a global scale. Doing so may require promoting - through praise and other social tools - a general desire for environmental preservation.
We might hear the developers say that the loss of this one species just isn't that important. It will not make that much of a difference in the overall scheme of things. After all, species come and go all the time.
Against this, an environmentalist can respond that the people on Easter Island could have fallen victim to the same way of thinking. "Clearly, the loss of this one tree is not that important. It is just one tree. Trees die all the time." However, that is exactly the attitude that brought them into the position they found themselves in at the end. It is the attitude that this one tree does not matter that got them into that situation, it is the attitude that this one species does not matter that will do the same for us, or so the argument goes. Thus, it is this attitude that we must condemn.
Recall that desirism is all about the evaluation of attitudes (desires), not actions.
However, the argument condemning the attitude that this one species does not matter depends on whether the claimed relationships between the attitude and consequences like those on Easter Island are true. Desirism cannot help us answer that question - it is an empirical question that depends on scientific research. Desirism brands the form of reasoning used above as valid, but it says nothing about the truth of the premises.
On the other hand, an environmentalist might argue that each species has intrinsic value. The disappearance of a species is intrinsically bad and is to be avoided regardless of the consequences. This avoids the problem of having to demonstrate that the relationships described above are true. When using the intrinsic value argument, those relationships are not relevant, so the environmentalist can avoid the need to defend them. This is what makes intrinsic-value arguments tempting.
Here, the desirist says, "Whoa. There is no intrinsic value. What you are doing here is exactly like the behavior of the person who hates homosexual marriage. Knowing that his desire alone gives him no right to harm others he invents a god, assigns his own desire to that god, and says, "God is offended." He has invented a myth to give an illusion of legitimacy to acts that fufill his own desires in ways that cause harm to others. Your myth about the intrinsic badness of extinction follows the same pattern. You want something that harms the intersts of others. In order to see yourself as a good person while you harm others, you give your harmful behavior an illusion of legitimacy by wrapping it in the fiction of realizing intrinsic values."
This illustrates the way in which desirism tells us which arguments are valid and which are invalid in this tpe of debate. It gives us some useful insight into sound moral reasoning. However, it does not dictate any particular conclusion. Moral conclusions depend on a combination of valid moral arguments and true premises. To discover the truth of premises, we must use empirical research. This type of truth cannot be provided a priori (which is exactly what most - if not all - competing theories try to do).
Friday, May 18, 2012
Environmentalists Versus Developers
Posted by Alonzo Fyfe at 8:13 AM
4 comments:
Ah, I see you share the common false opinion about environmentalists, that they do what they do because they love fuzzy cute little birds and animals and think trees look beautiful.
Let me give you a metaphor. You and a full compliment of passengers wake up together on a passenger plane. You don't know where you're going. It's dark outside; in fact, there's a storm going on. To your horror, you discover that the plane is on some kind of autopilot you don't understand, and the plane is definitely missing some controls. You can't figure out all the instruments, and you can't even be sure if -- given the autopilot -- the instruments are showing enough information to pilot the plane anyway.
To your horror, your fellow passengers start disassembling the plane from the inside and selling each other the parts, which they have a tendency to smash. In fact, some of them don't bother disassembling the pieces first, they just smash things up.
A few minutes ago, the plane started to tremble. You are quite certain that the wobbling started with the removal and breakage of a few specific parts because you were watching. You try to stop the other passengers, and they say "stop worrying, you can't prove we're going to cause a crash, the plane has always kept going so far."
That is the position of environmentalism; the point is not to preserve the cute little animals or the pretty trees, it's to preserve humanity. We know that the earth as it has been for the last several millennia can support human life and civilization. There are disquieting signs that if too much more damage occurs in certain particular ways, there will be big changes which we may or may not survive. There may even be hazards of which we are totally unaware, because ecology is vastly more complex than anything else we study -- physics, chemistry, geology, and biology are all sub-fields of ecology proper.
How much more of the world can we deforest, pave, pollute to the point of toxification, and/or irradiate before the ecosystem as a whole goes phut? Dunno, but the plane is wobbling, and a lot of idiots like you are saying "surely it doesn't matter if I pop out a few more rivets and take a gear out of the gearbox".
Furthermore, the snail darter is a particularly bad example for your argument, because the snail darter is a species which is a very good indicator of the health of its habitat. If the snail darter dies, it probably means everything else in the habitat is at least in danger. - May 18, 2012 at 10:41 AM
- Alonzo Fyfe said...
The opinions you are accusing me of having - i do not have.
My opinion about environmentalists is that they are a diverse group with diverse interests and it would be a mistake to think that they are all alike. - May 18, 2012 at 11:48 AM
Oh really? You don't list a desire for continued survival anywhere in your analysis, and yet if you talk to practically any serious, professional environmentalist, that's what they'll tell you.
- May 18, 2012 at 1:16 PM
- Alonzo Fyfe said...
The Easter Island example I used, as I said, is the same sort of argument as your airplane example. There is no relevant difference. - May 18, 2012 at 3:01 PM

subset: commoncrawl


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Ellen Arnison had two sons aged seven and five, and thought her family was complete. But shortly after her 40th birthday, Arnison, from Renfrewshire, changed her mind. "A couple of months after I married for the second time, my dad died. That led to a carpe diem conversation, when my husband and I decided we'd try for another baby," she says.
"I'd read so much about it being impossible for 'older' women to have children, I was sure nothing would happen. I kind of forgot about it. But a couple of months later I was pregnant."
Surprised but delighted, Arnison is by no means alone. For years, the media has been full of apocalyptic stories about women leaving motherhood too late. "Britain is facing an infertility time bomb" and "The female fertility clock starts ticking at 27" are just some recent examples. Author Helen Fielding summed up the pressures in Bridget Jones's Diary, in which the advice for her quintessential singleton heroine was: "You career girls. Can't put it off forever. Tick-tock."
But last week, this thinking was turned on its head. The latest Department of Health figures showed that abortion rates among women aged 35-plus had risen by 15 per cent since 2001. According to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), this rise in terminations was the result of women stopping using contraception after the age of 35, due to "scaremongering" that had led them to believe that they were infertile.
According to BPAS's research on 156,751 women having abortions between 2011 and 2013, 42 per cent of women in their forties hadn't used contraception, compared with 36 per cent in their early thirties and 34 per cent in their late twenties. The organisation, Britain's largest abortion provider, pointed out that more abortions were carried out for women over 40 than among teenagers.
"Over the past few years, we have seen much scaremongering about older women's fertility," says Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS. "From career women leaving it too late to older women banking on IVF to conceive, these stories lead many women to dramatically underestimate their own fertility later in life.
"Fertility does decline as you get older. But the drop is not as great as we are sometimes led to believe. For women who don't want to fall pregnant, the message is simple: use contraception until you have passed your menopause."
Cherie Blair was astonished to discover, at 45, that she was carrying her fourth child. "I thought: 'I can't be, I'm too old. It must be menopause,'?" she said. Actress Halle Berry last year revealed she was pregnant aged 46. "This has been the biggest surprise of my life, to tell you the truth. I thought I was kind of past the point where this could be a reality for me."
TV and radio presenter Gaby Roslin was similarly stunned, aged 41, to learn she was having a second child. "It was a surprise. I said to my obstetrician: 'But I'm so old!' He told me I was talking nonsense and that he had women of 46 on his books - and he's right. He said it's not an age thing, it's down to how healthy you are."
Before the introduction of reliable contraception, older mothers were common, with women giving birth to their last child when they were grandmothers. In the Twenties, the average age a woman had her last child was 42.
Today, 40-something mothers are more likely to be first-timers, and their numbers are rising once again. Office for National Statistics figures show that pregnancy rates for over-40s have more than doubled in the past 24 years, with 14 conceptions per 1,000 women aged 40-plus compared with six per 1,000 in 1990.
Today, many 20-something women are saddled with student debt. The average age to buy a first property is now 35, the age when women's fertility supposedly "goes over a cliff". One in three British men and one in five women aged between 20 and 34 still lives with their parents. No wonder the average age for a British woman to have her first child is 30, and 35 for university-educated women.
Among my own middle-class peer group, none of my close friends had her first child before 30. The vast majority were older than 35 and several were in their forties. I became pregnant at 35 and 37, with no problems and no regrets that I'd spent my carefree twenties focusing on friends and career. Being labelled an "elderly primigravida" in my birth notes only made me laugh.
But panic among young women has been increasing. The tipping point came in 2002, when US academic Sylvia Ann Hewlett published Baby Hunger, containing the unnerving statistic (that was misleading, since it only covered a tiny sample) that 42 per cent of career women had no children at the age of 40, and most deeply regretted it.
I frequently meet women in their mid-30s who fret about their fertility. "My boyfriend's 10 years younger than me and doesn't like me pressuring him to marry me, but I'm 36"; "I left my husband because he was unfaithful - I should have done it sooner but I didn't dare because I wanted to be a mum"; and "I'm not sure I'm really in love with him, but I'm 34 so I'd better marry him than risk never being a mother," are just three stories I've heard in recent months.
"I was consumed by anxiety that my age meant doom," wrote the US academic Jean Twenge, whose recent article on fertility scaremongering in the Atlantic magazine went viral.
"I was not alone. Women on internet message boards write of scaling back their careers, or having fewer children than they'd like to, because they can't bear the thought of trying to get pregnant after 35." Twenge had three children, all born after her 35th birthday.
The fertility expert Zita West says that she constantly sees clients "panicking unnecessarily". "Modern life puts up so many hurdles for women in their twenties that it's not easy for them to have babies at the 'ideal' time, and then there's so much anxiety and impatience from clients in their thirties.
"Couples put huge pressure on one another during ovulation and it's increasingly common in my consultations to see men who have performance anxiety around sex and ovulation. They say: 'Oh, my God, it's never going to happen' when they've only been trying for three months, or they live in different countries and only have sex once a month. Often they rush into having IVF when they don't need it."
In fact, the true statistics about female fertility are far less terrifying than is widely believed. Women do lose 90 per cent of their eggs by 30, but that still leaves them with 10,000, when only one is needed to make a baby.
Then there's the statistic that one in three women aged between 35 and 39 will not be pregnant after a year of trying, taken from a 2004 article in the journal Human Reproduction. These figures do not come from large, scientifically conducted studies of contemporary women, but from French birth records from 1670 to 1830, covering women with no access to modern health care or nutrition.
In contrast, the few studies of women born in the 20th century and trying to conceive are markedly more positive. One 2004 study of 770 European women found that 82 per cent of 35- to 39-year-olds would conceive within a year if they had sex once a week, compared with a very similar 86 per cent of 27- to 34-year-olds.
Consultant gynaecologist Tina Cotzias agrees that "older" women shouldn't be daunted. "Yes, chances of pregnancy decline with age but this doesn't mean it will never happen to you as an individual. And, of course, there are many reasons why it might not be right for a woman to have babies in her twenties, not least that she may not have met the right man. What's important is not to scare single women, but to communicate to a 28-year-old who is with the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with that she might be better off trying for a baby now than delaying it 10 years."
Cotzias warns that statistics are gloomier for IVF patients, with only 4 per cent of IVF cycles ending in a live birth in women aged 42 and older. Miscarriage rates soar in the over-40s, from an average 7 per cent to 18 per cent, and the risk of stillbirth doubles.
On the plus side, research indicates that "older" mothers usually have more solid marriages, command higher salaries and live longer than women who have their children in their twenties. When interviewed, these women almost invariably report that choosing to delay motherhood was the best choice they've made.
Ellie Stoneley, from Cambridge, author of the blog Mush-Brained Ramblings, was 47 when she conceived her daughter - Hope, now two - after IVF. "I had a straightforward pregnancy, and the medical staff could not have been more supportive. I get tired from time to time, but so do all new parents and I know if I'd had Hope younger, I'd have been trying to go out more in the evenings and would have found it much harder to get up in the night. Now all my energy's focused on my daughter. I wish I'd had a child younger as I'd have loved lots, but I do feel incredibly blessed."
Ellen Arnison went on, aged 42, to give birth to a healthy son, now four.
"Being pregnant in my forties was tougher than in my thirties," says Arnison, author of another blog, In A Bun Dance. "But motherhood was easier. I was much more relaxed, because I was more confident.
"I could be paranoid, but I do sometimes feel there is a sexist agenda in telling women they must have babies at what's also a crucial time in their careers," she continues. "The truth is there's no 'best' time for a baby - you take what life brings you."


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Do we have time for another record while Arctic sea ice records are falling around us like ripe plums? I guess we'll have to make time. M. A. Rodger, who runs the Marclimategraphs page, sent me this guest blog concerning record snow anomalies:
The untold drama of Northern snow cover
When considering the impact of climate change on polar regions, the star of the show has always been Arctic sea ice. Playing supporting roles are the Greenland ice cap and Antarctica. Yet one actor in the drama remains badly overlooked: the snows that cover our Northern continents.
In June 2012, for instance, it was reported that Northern Hemisphere Land Snow Cover had broken a record. The June snow anomaly was the lowest figure for June in the whole 45 year record, besting the previous record set in 2010 by 1 million square kilometres. This statement, reported as the last item in the US NSIDC's first July Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis bulletin understandably never gained great widespread coverage.
Yet this summer's Northern snow cover presents a far more dramatic story that surely deserve greater prominence. For a start, June 2012 snow cover was not just the record of June. Excluding Greenland with its ice cap, the June 2012 anomaly was the record for all months in the entire 45 year record. The anomaly stood at 5.74 million square kilometres, pipping the December 1980 record by 0.13 million square kilometres, although this again is hardly front page news.
It is only with analysis of the changing anomaly through the year that the true drama of the declining snow cover can be seen. At the height of this summer's melt, 2012 was 8.5 million sq kilometres ahead of the 1972-1979 average. This is a full month advance in the melt over a 27 year period. (That is twice the advance seen over recent decades in the UK's 250 year-long phenological record which is itself dramatic enough). Another way of visualising this early melt is that the average snow limit at the height of the melt season is now a whole 500 miles further North than it was 27 years ago.
And what is most dramatic is that this process is visibly accelerating. The average retreat North over the last 27 years, since the mid-1970s, is 18 miles per year. Since the mid-2000s it is 38 miles. In this last dramatic year, at the height of the melt season, the snow has been melting away 71 miles further North than in any other previous year.
The decline for Northern Hemisphere Land Snow Cover is just as dramatic and just as consequential as the Arctic sea ice decline. We ignore it at our peril.


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When Jamie Lynn Spears revealed she was expecting a baby back in 2007, the question of whether a pregnant teen should have a starring role on a television show that targets a young audience was broached (Spears played the lead on Nickelodeon's "Zoey 101.")
Now the magazine world enters into a similar dialogue as Teen Vogue's November issue, which pictures a pregnant, unmarried 19-year-old model on its cover, hits newsstands.
There's nothing about the cover that would indicate that Jourdan Dunn, who is the first black model to walk a Prada show since Naomi Campbell in the 1990s, is pregnant. She looks no different than Chanel Iman, who is also pictured, and the accompanying cover line says simply, "Teen Supermodels Jourdan and Chanel on their rise to the top."
Not until you read the accompanying piece does the subject of Dunn's pregnancy come into play. Toward the end of the interview, Dunn says her unplanned pregnancy was "really hard," and "all I could think about was what my mom was going to say, my agency, my boyfriend."
From all indications in the piece, all parties are supportive of Dunn, who is due in December.
A representative for Teen Vogue said that they didn't know Dunn was pregnant until after the photo shoot, and production schedules, among other factors, led to the decision to keep the cover in place.
Slideshow 26 photos
Celebrity Sightings
Whether or not you think it was right of Teen Vogue to go with the cover, it's obvious that the coverage of teen pregnancy continues to evolve. Spears' pregnancy forced a lot of families to have a conversation about why the young star was no longer on the television and was instead pictured in tabloids posing at her baby shower.
More recently, there are the challenges that came with Bristol Palin's pregnancy. While Palin has mostly stayed out of the spotlight since giving birth to son Tripp in December, the baby's father, Levi Johnston, has become a part of mainstream media for no reason other than impregnating the right politician's daughter at the right time.
If Spears and Palin weren't enough to spawn a dialogue about teen pregnancy, Teen Vogue will certainly advance the conversation, whether we're ready for it or not.
Keeping tabs: People's Jaycee Dugard exclusiveNext to People magazine's current issue, which displays a shockingly fresh-faced image of kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard, the cover of Star featuring Lindsay Lohan and the headline "Rock Bottom" seems a bit ridiculous.
With all due respect to Lohan's struggles, I'm pretty sure Dugard is the one who knows rock bottom better. And yet, the story, for all its horror, is an uplifting one in People.
"I'm so happy to be back," is the cover line, and the accompanying piece goes on to tell a story of the two months since Dugard's rescue in a way that's uplifting. Suffice to say then, People will be the most compelling magazine on the newsstand this week.
Courtney Hazlett delivers the Scoop Monday through Friday on msnbc.com. Follow Scoop on Twitter @courtneyatmsnbc


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QUESTION: What's the difference between 74lb card stock and 111lb card stock?
ANSWER: 74lb card stock is similar to the thickness of an average store bought greeting card. 111lb card stock is significantly thicker, more similar to a cereal box. 74lb card stock can run through most mid-range, consumer grade printers. 111lb card stock may be too thick for home printers. If in doubt, we recommend ordering samples to see, feel and test prior to purchase.
QUESTION: What's the difference between all the MATT shades of black?
ANSWER: From lightest to darkest black:
- Licorice Black - a lighter faded black
- Black Forest - a black with a subtle green undertone
- Ebony - a rich, classic black
QUESTION: What does Limba look like?
ANSWER: Limba is a white so bright it appears almost blue (think fresh snow or a pure white computer background). As with any of our papers, we encourage you to order samples to see in person prior to purchasing a full pack. This will allow you to determine if it is the right shade of white for you.


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I'm growing very fond of Jill Tucker, a "journalist" at the San Francisco Chronicle who gives me lots of meat for my blogging. A couple of weeks ago, I looked at her incurious (some might say lazy) reporting about the decision the Oakland Children's Museum's made to cancel a controversial art show consisting of pictures that Palestinian children had allegedly drawn. (I say allegedly because people more familiar with fakes than I think it is highly unlikely that real children created the pictures.)
Tucker ignored entirely the far-Left, anti-American, anti-Israel, antisemitic nature of the group sponsoring the show, and managed to make it sound as if these works were equivalent to Jewish children's drawings and poems from Terezinstadt. With few exceptions, those child artists died in Auschwitz's gas chambers. They didn't shop at local malls or swim in Olympic pools. And when doctors attended those Jewish children, their goals were malevolent, not humanitarian.
Tucker is at it again, this time with a report purporting to explain that the teacher who punished students for saying "bless you" in class had no anti-religious motivation whatsoever. To give Tucker credit where credit is due, this story starts with good spin. She announces, loudly and repeatedly, that the kids who received penalties weren't exercising ordinary good manners when they said "bless you;" they were, instead, acting out solely to irritate their teacher:
It all started when high school health teacher Steve Cuckovich disciplined his freshman students at Will C. Wood High School last week for repeatedly disrupting class by responding to sneezes with a overenthusiastic chorus of "Bless You."
The sneezer would then thank each giver of the blessing individually.
Cuckovich, as teachers have done since time immemorial, decided to nip that behavior in the bud by docking student grades for the offense.
See? Totally innocent. Naughty students; appropriately strict teacher. Every one of us remembers those days from our own high school years.
How in the world, then, did this story become a world-wide kerfuffle? Tucker knows who was at fault: A busy-body parent and Fox News turned garden-variety classroom discipline into a Christian-outrage cause célèbre:
A parent saw the deduction and made a phone call – not to the teacher or the principal or even an elected official, said district Superintendent John Niederkorn.
And that's about when Cuckovich found a local Fox TV news reporter in his classroom asking why he was banning "Bless you."
Our good soldier Tucker describes the way in which religious zealots around the world (i.e., Christians) got their knickers in a twist merely because a teacher clamped down on disruptive behavior. She explains carefully, with myriad quotations yet, that Cuckovich's only sin was the fact that, in the heat of the moment, he punished the students for saying "bless you," rather than focusing more generally on the fact that they were disrupting his class.
So far, I am totally with Tucker. she's right. Absolutely right. Her damage control is pitch-perfect. Tucker starts singing badly out of tune, however, when confronted by Cuckovich's own conduct immediately after the fact. That was when he got the opportunity to explain in his own words what happened in that classroom (emphasis mine):
Cuckovich, however, inadvertently added to the controversy by explaining to reporters that he used the situation as a teaching moment, educating students on the origins of "bless you."
It appeared to be an effort to reason with students before punishing them, but it added fuel to the religious fury.
"The blessing doesn't really make any sense anymore," he told the Sacramento Fox TV news affiliate. "When you sneezed in the old days, they thought you were dispelling evil spirits out of your body. So they were saying God bless you for getting rid of the evil spirits. But today, I said, really what you're doing doesn't make sense anymore."
I love that Tucker-ish word "inadvertently." You see, the problem wasn't what Cuckovich did. It was that he explained what he did. Tucker seems to find nothing unnerving about a public school teacher who lectures students about the fact that "God bless you" is an archaic throwback to a primitive time when people actually believed in God and evil, and then explicitly censors that term in his classroom.
So there you have it: In Tucker-world, it's always entirely accidental when a teacher displays religious hostility in a classroom.
I don't doubt that Cuckovich was legitimately irritated by genuinely bad behavior from his students. Had Cuckovich limited himself to explaining the ancient origins of a commonly used phrase, while reminding students that disruptive behavior is always subject to penalty, there would have been no story. What makes the whole story newsworthy, and Tucker's spin silly, is the fact that Cuckovich launched into what amounts to a "God is dead" lecture to justify his decision and then took the extra step of explicitly prohibiting the phrase "God bless you." You begin to get the feeling that this guy is an atheist (which is perfectly okay, as I'm periodically one myself), and that he wants to pass that belief-less system on to his health class students (which is not okay).
As it is, even thought I'm an intermittent atheist and periodic agnostic myself, I'm willing to take all the blessings I can get. We live in a tough world, and there's a lot to be said for a little good feeling coming from both those around us and, assuming he's not dead, from God himself.
Cross-posted at Bookworm Room


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Now it's time for our Wisdom Watch conversation. That's the part of the program where we speak with those who've made a difference through their work. Today, we hear from Paul C. Lo. He's one of the newest municipal judges in California. At the age of 45, he's also one of the youngest. But Judge Lo is also believed to be the first judge on any court in the U.S. to be of Hmong decent. We spoke with him last month about his rather unusual journey to the bench. He was born in Laos. He left the country at just 7 years of age with his family. And I started our conversation by asking him why they left.
PAUL C. LO: The Hmong people, obviously, were involved in the Vietnam War - the Secret War in Laos. And in 1975, when the country fell under Communist rule, virtually overnight, a huge number of people who were in the war, particularly those fighting on behalf of the United States, so with the CIA, had to flee Laos. Otherwise, there was going to be huge retribution and persecution as the country fell under Communists. So my family was no different.
MARTIN: And then you ended up first in a refugee camp in Thailand. Do you remember it?
LO: Yes, I do. We were there for a good four years. And so I remember, even as a young person growing up in the refugee camps, I remember the sights and the sounds and some of the hardships of growing up in a refugee camp.
MARTIN: And then your family made its way to California where they were granted asylum. How did they make it all those years?
LO: We had eight siblings - rather nine in our family. I have a half-sister. We grew up on welfare. And my parents also supported us by farming - growing vegetables and selling at farmers' markets. So I remember, even as a very young person in junior high and high school, those were our activities during the weekends and during those summers. There is something about a family coming together and seeing crops grow and seeing - and I enjoyed seeing that because that's what my parents did when they were back in Laos. That's what they knew what to do. And I saw them at their very best. They could not have done anything else. And so I remember that very fondly. But I also remember them telling us, study hard so you don't have to come back to the farm.
MARTIN: What made you decide on the law?
LO: The seed was planted by a high school teacher. He had taken interest to me and asked me what I wanted to do. And I said, well, I want to be a psychologist. And he said, you know, you can help your Hmong community a lot more by being an attorney. So that just kind of stuck with me. And then I went into college with a psychology major but hated it, quickly changed to a different major and started pursuing seriously the study of law.
MARTIN: What do you think he meant by that? I mean, were there things that you saw that - where people weren't able to stand up for themselves that you felt that maybe you could be helpful?
LO: Yeah, I think he saw that, you know, even as a young person growing up, I was the mouth, the eyes, the ears of my parents. Wherever we go, either to the welfare department, to the DMV, to any institution, I was translating for them. And I saw them having experienced tremendously adjustment difficulties with the institutions. There were cases of folks who had been in jail for a minor misdemeanor.
And they had thought they were going to be in jail for a long time, committed suicide. And I think my teacher saw some of those things when the huge influx of Hmong refugees came to the Central Valley of California. And he was right that what we really needed was someone who would understand the legal system and be able to help them maneuver that system.
MARTIN: As I understand it from reading the reporting locally, that you had been encouraged to pursue a judgeship some years ago. Is that right? But you declined. Is that true?
LO: That's true. You know, I've been so fortunate to have good friends and colleagues who thought that I would make a good judge. And the opportunities came a number of years ago, but I just felt that I could never take myself away as an advocate for the community. But I think now there are more Southeast Asian attorneys practicing in the community. And so I finally feel that, yeah, if I leave, everything will be OK.
MARTIN: If you're just joining us, we're having a Wisdom Watch conversation with Paul C. Lo. He has been appointed to the municipal bench in California. He's in the Superior Court at Merced County, California. He is believed to be the first Hmong-American judge in U.S. history. So, you know, speaking of which, Judge Lo, that sometimes these firsts mean more to journalists than they do to the people who achieve these things. I mean, sometimes, you know, we make a bigger deal out of it. And then we approach the people and say, did you know, you know, you're the first to do X, Y or Z? And people go, so, and - you know. I wanted to ask you, is this important to you?
LO: My parents and the folks of my parents' generation, they gave up everything so that their kids can be here to have a better life. The appointment is a small affirmation that what they went through is worth it. That's sort of the message that I think - a collective affirmation, I think, in the community that this is a good thing. So a number of people have told me that. And I'm just happy to be a small part of it.
MARTIN: Was there something you feel that your particular perspective brings that has not been part of the equation - not having someone of your background in this role?
LO: Well, I think so. I think that having grown up differently, bilingual and bicultural, gives me a certain understanding, particularly in my community where there's a huge population of Hmong-Americans. It gives me an understanding of what they went through, some of the issues that they struggle with. How that will change my ruling, I - you know, I don't know. I think it will be on a case-by-case basis. But, you know, at the end of the day, I will have to follow the law whatever the law is.
MARTIN: We call these conversations our Wisdom Watch. It's where we ask people to reflect and offer wisdom to people who might be listening to our conversation who might identify with you for whatever reason. Do you mind if I ask you, do you have some wisdom to share?
LO: Our accomplishments are never just personal accomplishments. Despite all the problems we have in our country, I think America still remains a land of opportunity and a land of dreams for many people, regardless of where you started, where you came from. I think that if you're here and you take advantage of the educational opportunities that we have in this country, the doors will open for you. And people along the way, good people along the way will support you. So I've been so fortunate to have this opportunity and to be where I am. And I look forward to many more years of serving the community as a judge.
MARTIN: Paul C. Lo has been appointed a judge in the Superior Court of Merced County, California. And as I mentioned, he was with us from Modesto. Your Honor, thank you so much for speaking with us. Congratulations to you.
LO: Thank you, Michel. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Climate Change 2007: Mitigation of Climate Change
The planet is warming quickly as more greenhouse gases are added to the Earths atmosphere. The amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere increased 70% between 1970 and 2004. The warming caused by the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has large impacts on people, animals, and ecosystems.
How can we slow global warming?
A new report, released 4 May 2007, highlights options for decreasing the amount of global warming. The report was developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, experts from about 150 countries brought together by the United Nations. Their job is to compile and share what we know about climate and global warming based on thousands of studies done in recent years.
According to this new report, Mitigation of Climate Change, if we continue to live as we have, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will continue to rise. The report highlights technologies that are currently available which can help, such as switching energy sources from coal to cleaner gas, nuclear power, or renewable energy. Driving only fuel-efficient vehicles and using public transportation limit the amount of greenhouse gases emitted too. And bicycling and walking are always good options. In buildings, having thick insulation and efficient appliances are good ideas. The report also suggests technologies for agriculture, industry and forestry that lessen the amount of greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere.
Technologies that will be coming soon, within the next 10 to 20 years, are also highlighted in the report including Carbon Storage and Capture technologies for energy supplies, advanced nuclear and renewable energy, new hybrid and electric vehicles, and higher efficiency airplanes. The report also takes a look 20 to more than 50 years into the future at how and when we will eventually be able to stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the rate of global warming.
Learn more! Read the full report: Mitigation of Climate Change


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What Are Cookies?
Cookies are pieces of data, normally stored in text files, that websites place on visitors' computers to store a range of information, usually specific to that visitor - or rather the device they are using to view the site - like the browser or mobile phone.
They were created to overcome a limitation in web technology. Web pages are 'stateless' - which means that they have no memory, and cannot easily pass information between each other. So, cookies provide a kind of memory for web pages.
Cookies allow you to login on one page, then move around to other pages and stay logged in. They allow you to set preferences for the display of a page, and for these to be remembered the next time you return to it.
Cookies can also be used to watch the pages you visit between sites, which allows advertisers to build up a picture of your interests. Then when you land on a site that shows one of their adverts - they can tailor it to those interests. This is known as 'behavioural advertising'.
Almost all websites use cookies in some way or another, and every page you visit in those sites writes cookies to your computer and receives them back from it.
Cookies are incredibly useful – they allow modern websites to work the way people have come to expect – with every increasing levels of personalisation and rich interactive functionality.
However, they can also be used to manipulate your web experience in ways you might not expect, or like. It could be to your benefit, or the benefit of someone else – even a business or organisation that you have never had any direct contact with, or perhaps heard of.
It is impossible to tell just by looking at them, whether particular cookies are benefitting you or another party. You have to rely on the website you are visiting to tell you how it uses cookies.
Learn more about the different Types of Cookies, and Other Tracking Technologies


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Amnesty International Annual Report 2012 - Paraguay
- Document source:
24 May 2012
Head of state and government: Fernando Lugo Méndez
Death penalty: abolitionist for all crimes
Population: 6.6 million
Life expectancy: 72.5 years
Under-5 mortality: 22.6 per 1,000
Adult literacy: 94.6 per cent
Progress was made in resolving the land claims of the Sawhoyamaxa and Kelyenmagategma, but other Indigenous Peoples continued to be denied their right to their traditional lands. The authorities attempted to undermine and misrepresent the work of human rights defenders.
A 60-day state of exception was declared in October in the northern departments of Concepción and San Pedro following two attacks attributed to the Paraguayan People's Army (Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo, EPP), an armed opposition group.
In February, Paraguay's human rights record was assessed under the UN's Universal Periodic Review. States expressed concerns regarding Indigenous Peoples' rights, impunity, women's rights and discrimination on grounds of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
Following a visit in March, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief expressed concern about delays in passing anti-discrimination legislation; the lack of implementation of non-discrimination mechanisms, particularly in the Chaco region; and the weak presence and capacity of state institutions.
In May, a national mechanism for the prevention of torture was approved, as required under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture.
Indigenous Peoples' rights
Progress was made in resolving the land claims of some Indigenous communities, but other communities continued to be denied their right to their traditional lands.
In September, five years after a judgement by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in their favour, the Sawhoyamaxa signed an agreement with the government and the current landowners to begin the process of restoring the community's traditional lands. Under the agreement, a government agency was due to buy a 14,404-hectare plot from two businesses based in Puerto Colón by the end of the year.
In August, the land claim of the Kelyenmagategma was formally recognized by the authorities and the land title on 8,700 hectares of land was officially transferred, allowing the community to recover part of their traditional territory. The community, who started the legal process to reclaim part of their land in 2000, had suffered threats and intimidation that the authorities failed to investigate.
There was no resolution to Yakye Axa or Xámok Kásek land claims and there were no significant advances in investigations into the alleged spraying of Indigenous communities in Itakyry with pesticides in 2009.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination assessed Paraguay's record in August. It recommended that Paraguay adopt reforms to ensure that the justice system protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples, including effective mechanisms for lodging complaints and claims concerning land, for bringing about the restitution of traditional lands, and for fully recognizing Indigenous land rights in a co-ordinated and systematic manner.
Human rights defenders
The authorities sought to undermine the work of human rights defenders.
In July, lawyers from the human rights co-ordinating body, Coordinadora de Derechos Humanos del Paraguay (CODEHUPY) lodged a legal writ requesting that the Attorney General substantiate claims he made to the press that its lawyers were in telephone contact with the EPP. The allegations were made in the context of Judge Gustavo Bonzi's decision at the end of June to release 14 people accused by the authorities of providing support to the EPP in a kidnapping case, on the grounds that prosecutors had failed to provide evidence of their involvement. CODEHUPY lawyers representing six of the accused had complained of violations of due process guarantees in these cases. The Tribunal for the Prosecution of Magistrates called for Judge Bonzi to be suspended for exceeding his authority in releasing the 14 and, in August, the Concepción Appeals Court overturned his ruling. A challenge to the constitutionality of the Appeals Court decision was pending at the end of the year.
Four members of Iniciativa Amotocodie, an NGO working to protect the rights of uncontacted Ayoreo Indigenous groups living in the Paraguayan Chaco region, faced legal proceedings on charges including breach of trust. Investigations into the organization started after they publicly declared their opposition to a scientific expedition called "Dry Chaco 2010" on the grounds that it could harm the rights of uncontacted Indigenous Peoples and were continuing at the end of the year. The expedition was subsequently cancelled.
In July, Norberto Atilio Bianco, an army doctor at the Campo de Mayo clandestine detention centre in Argentina in the 1970s, was extradited from Paraguay for a second time to face charges of appropriating babies born to women who had been victims of unlawful detention and enforced disappearance.
In September, the authorities reported that the remains found in a grave excavated in a police station in Asunción might be those of victims of human rights violations under the military government of General Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989). The report of the Truth and Justice Commission published in August 2008 stated that at least 59 people had been executed and another 336 detainees were the victim of enforced disappearance during the period of military rule.
Complaints of torture brought by at least four recruits at the Francisco Solano López Military Academy in Capiatá were under investigation in the military justice system.
Disclaimer: © Copyright Amnesty International
This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.


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Anonymous Editing on Wikipedia Keeps Morgellons Sufferers in the Dark, Content Curated from: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10707772.htm
A series of important new studies provide evidence that Morgellons disease has an infectious origin which should be treatable. Yet, despite this good news, thousands of Morgellons sufferers seeking legitimate and current answers may not be reading up-to-date information.
For many Internet users Wikipedia is the first information source they will find on a given topic. Many people regard the site as being an unbiased, openly edited encyclopedia run largely by volunteers. It is viewed as a convenient resource for quick, easily understandable information and people do not question its reliability and accuracy. According to The Charles E. Holman Foundation (CEHF), what the public does not realize is that Wikipedia is posing as a genuine source of knowledge, the accuracy of their information is greatly lacking and it is vulnerable to manipulation through editing by anonymous special interest groups.
Morgellons disease is a debilitating, multisystem illness characterized by skin lesions that contain microscopic multicolored filaments. It has long been thought by mainstream medicine to be the result of self-mutilation and delusions of infestation. However, a recent series of studies have described ground-breaking DNA research linking Morgellons disease to the spirochetal bacteria, Borrelia, thus supporting an infectious etiology for the mystery malady. This research was to have brought new hope to thousands of people devastated by this illness.
Morgellons Patients Suffer in the Dark
For many, this hope will go unnoticed. Efforts by registered users to update Wikipedia with this important new evidence have failed. According to The CEHF an anonymous editor who goes by the name of Yobol quickly removes all new information, sometimes within minutes of the edit. The new information comes from studies published in reputable peer-reviewed medical journals that are indexed in PubMed and similar medical databases. Yet, Yobol permits theories, opinions as well as unpublished studies which apparently suit the anonymous editor's agenda.
According to The CEFH, the name Yobol recurs repeatedly as an active editor on many Wikipedia medical topics including, but not limited to: Crohn's disease, plantar fasciitis, Lyme disease, general medicine, vaccinations, infectious diseases, Rheumatology, chemotherapy, oncology, urology, optometry, pediatric medicine, PANDAS, and cardiology. A quick Google search reveals that many other Wikipedia editors have lodged complaints against this anonymous editor. Yobol as an individual cannot possibly be an authority on so many topics, especially within minutes of any changes being made to articles. It is highly likely that Yobol is actually a very organized group of individuals. The fact that changes to such a diverse group of topics are deleted within minutes suggests a sophisticated monitoring system with significant financial backing to flag alterations being made.
The Charles E. Holman Foundation (CEHF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to patient advocacy, research and education concerning Morgellons disease. The CEHF is demanding that Wikipedia clean up its act and allow open editing of its information about Morgellons disease. Anything less than transparent editing does a disservice to Wikipedia's audience and discredits the website. Anonymous editors have no place in cyberspace.
Non Objective
The Morgellons Wikipedia page is composed of a hodgepodge of evidence, ranging from peer-reviewed published primary studies to hearsay and mere speculation. What is important to note is that only evidence suiting the current editor's agenda is allowed to stand, while opposing peer-reviewed, Pub Med index evidence is deleted. In light of the fact that Wikipedia is not a reliable source for Morgellons information, we recommend people seek current medical-scientific information elsewhere, such as Pub-Med and The CEHF Research Page.
The Charles E. Holman Foundation (The CEHF), based in Austin, TX, is a 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization committed to advocacy and philanthropy for Morgellons disease. The foundation was named for Charles E. Holman, a pioneer in the fight against Morgellons disease and is led by Executive Director Cindy Casey Holman, RN.


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Examining Bitcoin's ups and downs
Bitcoin has progressed from being only a nerd's version of gold years ago.
Bitcoin has undergone a lot of ups and downs in its brief history. Online trading school Investoo.com has created an infographic detailing the major Bitcoin crashes since it was introduced. Bitcoin is both a cryptocurrency and an electronic payment system invented by an unidentified programmer, or group of programmers, under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. It was introduced on 31 October 2008 to a cryptography mailing list, and released as open source software in 2009.
Investoo.com notes Bitcoin's journey has been long, from the first Bitcoin transaction, which resulted in the kick-off of the Bitcoin blockchain on 3 January 2009, to the recent moves by Chinese authorities to restrict Bitcoin transactions.
Earlier this year, the People's Bank of China launched spot checks on the country's three largest Bitcoin exchanges to look into a range of possible rule violations, amid increasing government efforts to stem capital outflows and relieve pressure on the yuan. Stanko Saponja, an analyst at Investoo.com, notes that when Bitcoin was introduced in 2009, one Bitcoin was equivalent to $0.00076.
In December last year, the total value of all Bitcoins in circulation hit a record high of above $14 billion. However, in January this year, the dramatic rally in digital currency came to a spectacular end with a plunge of up to 20% as China's yuan rose sharply. "In 2013, the price briefly exceeded $1 200, and this was followed by a crash in the price of Bitcoin, sending it down to below $250 soon after," Saponja notes. "This has led some skeptics to claim this price rise, too, is a bubble."
He points out the size and computing power of the Bitcoin mining network, which confirms and validates transactions, has risen exponentially since then, and the number of users, merchants, and exchange volume has grown similarly. According to Saponja, the rapid rise in 2013 is now attributed to fraudulent trading and price manipulation that exploited illiquid and immature markets, and which eventually led to the famous collapse of the primary, and corrupt, Bitcoin Exchange. "Bitcoin has gone from being just a nerd's version of gold years ago, to now being another thing people do to try to hold onto their wealth," he says.
Saponja says in 2015, Bitcoin rose modestly, from $313 to $431, a 37% rise, kicking off a year of steady growth throughout 2016. The price surged 122% in 2016, making it one of the top trades of the year (from around $400 to just under $1 000), he adds. Investoo.com notes 2016 saw relative price stability in Bitcoin, as its price rose steadily, and with lower volatility than had been experienced in the past, and it also gained wider acceptance and legitimacy as a means of payment.
Some analysts predict 2017 will be another banner year, while others are more skeptical, calling this recent rise a bubble that is waiting to burst (current price is 1 BTC = $1 023.38 — 27 March 2017). "My opinion is that demand for Bitcoin as a currency is also likely to continue to grow in 2017, again as China has promised to restrict capital outflows and to devalue its currency in order to protect exporters."
Describing the major drivers of Bitcoin, Saponja says increased demand came from China as capital controls tightened and regulators continued to devalue the yuan systematically. China and India have both been big buyers as part of a broader global landscape that has pushed Bitcoin's acceptance, further along, he notes.
"Chinese investors have bought Bitcoins as the yuan has lost its value, while the surge in India has been driven thanks to the government's decision to retire some currency denominations. In most countries, companies that trade Bitcoins onto the local currency would be regulated, as more and more larger corporations start offering Bitcoin as a payment alternative."
Nonetheless, he says Bitcoin has sometimes attracted the wrong types of people — those looking to prey on others who fall under the spell of a never-ending upward trend for Bitcoin's price. "Whether it's illegal online marketplaces, pump-and-dump schemes or shady crypto exchanges, they all create a black cloud over the industry. And, every time there is another Bitcoin robbery or scam, it draws attention from the mainstream.
"The bad actor problem creates a consumer protection issue for Bitcoin. When people learn about Bitcoin and are lured to products and services that do not follow best practices, as opaque as they may be in this industry, that's a problem. According to some analysts, the five biggest threats facing Bitcoin are the centralisation of Bitcoin, fraud, regulation, poor mobile platform support, and confidence."
Chuck Reynolds
Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member


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Paul Harris Fellow certificate - award given by the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International. 1980 Mar 18.
Golden Year Bruin photograph - Ackerman, Drake, & two other people. 1969.
Drake Relays photograph - Ackerman & other people. n.d.
Hollywood Park photograph - Ackerman & other people. n.d.
Hollywood Park "Westwood States" photograph - Ackerman & other people. n.d.
Meeting of the first annual Los Angeles Coliseum relays committee at the University Club - sitting left to right: Seth Van Patten, D. D. Durr, Bill Hunter, Bill Ackerman, Ralph Chick, & Roger Jessup. 1941.
UCLA Atheltic Hall of Fame trophy give to William C. Ackerman. 1984.
Ackerman, William C. and Dr. Rod Turner. 1981.
York, Duke of, at Charter Day photograph. 1966 Mar.
Ackerman, William C. and other people photograph. n.d.
Baseball team photograph. ca. 1920-1924.
ITCA (Intercollegiate Tennis Coaches Association) Collegiate Hall of Fame certificate - award given for induction into the hall of fame. n.d.
Edwad A. Dickson Plaque - given by UCLA for the outstanding alumnus of the year. 1947.
William C. Ackerman Award presented by Beverly Hills Rotary Club trophy. 1985.
NCAA Tennis Bowl donated by the Associated Student of UCLA for William C. Ackerman. 1955.
Paul Harris Fellow medal - award given by the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International. 1980 Mar 18.
Medal of Merit "This Medal of Merit has been presented to you in appreciation for your support as a member of the Republican Presidential Task Force. Ronald Reagan." 1980.
Rotary Club of Beverly Hills photograph. n.d.
Ackerman, William C. photograph with group of people. n.d.
Charter Members of the Founders Club certificate - given by the UCLA Alumni Association. ca. 1965.
Helms Athletic Foundation Hall of Fame Honoring William C. Ackerman for Noteworthy Achievement College Tennis plaque. n.d.
The Crusade of 1952 In Appreciation to William C. Ackerman for Noteworthy Endeavors as a Member of the Eisenhower-Nixon Sports Committee. 1952.
To William C. Ackerman UCLA Administrator of the Century Presented By the Class of 1952 on its 25th Anniversary plaque. 1977 Sep 18.
Baseball team photograph. ca. 1920-1924.
Diploma for the Degree Bachelor of Education from the Teachers College of the Southern Branch of the University of California. 1926.
The President of the United States of America to All Ahall See These Presents, Greeting: Know Ye, That Reposing Special Trust & Confidence in the Patriotism, Fidelity, & Abilities of William C. Ackerman certificate - given by SSS Director Lewis B. Hershey. 1964.


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Opening to Our Primordial Nature
Opening to Our Primordial Nature
Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Friday, 7 January 2011
Publish Place:
Ithaka, New York
Snow Lion Publications
Publish Year:
E-book Tag:
This book provides clear and deep explanations of how to uncover our inherent wisdom and compassion. The authors explain how our minds function and what our primordial nature is; they show us how to go about cultivating insight, bodhichitta, and devotion so that our true nature can manifest. They give detailed instructions on how to meditate using the tantric techniques of visualization, mantra, and formless meditation. At the same time, the book is simple and accessible, pointing out how we can see our fundamentally enlightened nature. This is a great introduction to Tibetan Buddhism by highly respected teachers from the Nyingmapa Vajrayana tradition.


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Free Superb line: prints and drawings from Genoa 1500–1800 . Free . Showing prints and drawings from Genoa's golden age, this display spotlights an artistic powerhouse that rivalled Venice, Florence and Rome. Find out more about Superb line: prints and drawings from Genoa 1500–1800
Free Gesture and line: four post-war German and Austrian artists . Free . Explore the work of four artists who spearheaded the practice of drawing in Germany and Austria's post-war years. Find out more about Gesture and line: four post-war German and Austrian artists
Free A Scot in St Ives: works by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham . Free . Explore the work of a leading member of the 'St Ives School' of artists, who blazed a trail in British art from the 1940s–60s. Find out more about A Scot in St Ives: works by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham
Book now Legion: life in the Roman army . Book now . From family life on the fort to the brutality of the battlefield, experience Rome's war machine through the people who knew it best. Find out more about Legion: life in the Roman army
Book now Michelangelo: the last decades . Book now . This major exhibition looks at the remarkable energy and creativity Michelangelo brought to the last 30 years of his life. Find out more about Michelangelo: the last decades
Reopens July 2024 Admonitions of the instructress to the court ladies . Reopens July 2024 . A masterpiece of early Chinese figure painting, from the fifth to seventh century AD, displayed annually at the British Museum. Find out more about Admonitions of the instructress to the court ladies
Performance £10 24 Mar 2024 Sold out Ovid's Metamorphoses . Sold out . Inspired by Ovid's tales of transformation, Hugh Lupton and Daniel Morden breathe life into some of the most famous myths in the world. Sold out
Study days & courses £129 12 Apr 2024 – 3 May 2024 Book now Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs: an introduction for beginners . Book now . Learn to read Egyptian hieroglyphs through this four-week course and practice with original texts from objects in the collection. Book Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs: an introduction for beginners now
Performance £10 21 Apr 2024 Book now Woyengi and the Medicine Woman . Book now . Storyteller Jan Blake brings a rare slice of Nigerian myth to the British Museum stage. Book now
Performance £10 12 May 2024 Book now The Tantric Ten . Book now . Expect life, death, creation, destruction and sacrifice, all in search of cosmic truth within this captivating performance. Book now


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I decided I really wanted to make something that would/could be around for a long time and would suit whatever nursery colours they ended up having.
I have included the pattern I used at the bottom of this post.
I used bamboo cotton so it can be washed often.
I've always liked ripple blankets and thought they were much harder than this, but I would recommend them to anyone!
With white, chain about 1.5 times as wide as you want your blanket to be. Don't worry if it is too long- you can always cut off the excess of your chain once you've started you valleys and peaks and can see how much you like.
I like three single crochet up the side of the hill, 3 crochet into the next single crochet, then three single crochet don the other side of the hill. Then, to make the valley, skip two single crochet and start the three going up the hill again.
At the last "side" of a peak you'll need to skip a single crochet and then turn as normal and skip another as you up the side again- otherwise your piece gradually increases- something I missed the first time I tried this.
Here is the pattern, properly laid out:
Row 1: With white , single crochet (sc) in 2nd chain (ch) from hook, sc in next 2 ch, *3 sc in next ch, sc in next 3 ch, skip (sk) next 2 ch, sc in next 3 ch; repeat from * to last 4 ch, 3 sc in next ch, sc in next 3 ch - 13 ripples.
Row 2: Ch 1, turn, skip (sk) first st, sc in next 3 sts, *3 sc in next st, sc in next 3 sts, sk next 2 sts, sc in next 3 sts; rep from * to last 5 sts, 3 sc in next st, sc in next 2 sts, sk next st, sc in last st.
Then I did 6 rows of white and two of the colours.
Happy crocheting!


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On the AIR
Just in case life wasn't busy enough for me these days…I've teamed up with a couple great cycling guys and ventured into the world of Podcasts. It feels great to announce that Cycling 360 is now on the AIR. I am quite humbled by the company I'm keeping for these Podcasts, and am so excited to be working with Rob Grissom (Positive Performance Coaching) and Victor Jimenez (Bicycle Lab).
Yep, that right…now you get to hear that Canadian accent of mine as I sit down with Rob and Victor for our roundtable discussions on a variety of great cycling topics. We launched the website and podcast about three weeks ago with Cycling 360 Podcast #1: Weight Maintenance for Cyclists. This week we posted our Cycling 360 Podcast #2: Plateaus, so now both are available for your listening pleasure. You can either listen directly online or download from itunes so you can take us with you on your ipod or other device.
Okay, so Rob is one of the hottest cycling coaches out there right now and he brings a ton of wisdom and advice to each of our podcasts. You may remember Victor from the posts I did on my professional bike fit last year. He runs Bicycle Lab and knows absolutely everything there is to know about a bike and it's rider. Two great guys and two super knowledgeable cyclists…..am I worthy of being on a podcast with them? They are definitely the brains of Cycling 360. Have a listen and see what you think.
Watch for our third Cycling 360 podcast: Getting Started in Racing….Coming soon to www.cycling360media.com. Also be sure to friend us up on Twitter and Facebook so you can keep updated on the latest podcasts and Cycling 360 information.
I really look forward to hearing your input on the new site….go on now, give it a listen.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download


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When I think of a script kiddie I think of someone who might barely research a tool then point it at a website - things like the recent question about LOIC come to mind when I think of that. A hacker (either black/white/grey), I imagine, is much more methodic and plans his route - they're running this system, with that IDS, and these security measures - so their attack is hopefully more pinpointed, less noisy, and more effective.
What I'm having trouble with is distinguishing between the two - a script kiddie might use metasploit, Cain & Abel, or Nessus, but a hacker or pentester would probably use them as well. What distinguishes these two? I know the script kiddie most likely won't know what's going on, but to what extent does the hacker need to know what's going on to not be considered a 'script kiddie'?
For example I like security and I am really interested in learning about it. I know about various tools such as metasploit, nessus, cain, hamster/ferret, wireshark, nmap, LOIC, etc. but I don't use them because I don't know how, or quite understand how exactly they work. I've been setting up a network of VMs to play with and do it responsibly. If that's considered being a script kiddie, what would be the defining line between a script kiddie and a hacker?


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New York City, NY: Nov. 20, 2020 – Published via (Wired Release)- The worldwide Brachytherapy Afterloader Seeds Market report intensely underlines essential market fragments including types, Key developments, driving commercial centers dependent on geographical regions, key organizations, and innovations. The report provides information on the historical and current market size and the future potential of the Brachytherapy Afterloader Seeds Market.
The report primarily emphasizes prominent Brachytherapy Afterloader Seeds manufacturers/companies, segments, competition, and the environment of the global Brachytherapy Afterloader Seeds industry.The outbreak of COVID-19 was the key cause for the development and acceptance of Brachytherapy Afterloader Seeds.The CAGR of the market for the coming years to 2030 has been estimated based on a complete assessment of the market with important information concerning the different segments of the sector. The report moreover Research Report is estimated to grow at the highest growth rate till 2030. The study also Offering a summary of important data and deep insight related to growth trends as well as the industry players. Key companies profiled in the report include-Elekta, Theragenics, Eckert and Ziegler, Oncura / GE Healthcare, Varian, BARD, Team Best, IsoAid.
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Competitive Study:
Manufacturers segment analysis:
Eckert and Ziegler
Oncura / GE Healthcare
Team Best
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Commercial real estate occupancies and capital flows will continue gaining momentum through the end of 2006, according to a recent report commissioned by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Fueling this broad-based recovery: steady job growth, strong international trade and investors' ongoing efforts to diversify into commercial property. The analysis crunched data from Real Capital Analytics and Torto-Wheaton Research covering all five core property classes in the top 56 largest metropolitan areas.
"Vacancy rates are declining in all of the major commercial sectors, and rents are rising at healthy rates," says David Lereah, chief economist at trade group NAR, which represents more than 1.2 million chiefly residential brokers. One of the report's chief findings is that investors poured $268 billion into commercial real estate in 2005, up 44% from the 2004 total on deals above $5 million.
Lereah believes that investors will buy commercial properties as a diversification play. Roughly 13% of all NAR members hold an ownership stake in at least one commercial property.
Office vacancy rates, which closed 2005 at 13.6%, will hit 11% by the end of 2006. This tightening should help office landlords raise rents up by 5% this year. In 2005, by comparison, average rents climbed just 2% to reach $16 per sq. ft. at the end of the year.
Occupancy gains will continue to lead rental growth. The net absorption of office space (defined as the leasing of both new and existing space) this year is projected to register 93.4 million sq. ft., which would exceed the 89.1 million sq. ft. in net absorption posted in 2005. The NAR report did not forecast total investment sales volume, but 2005 saw nearly $100 billion in investment grade office buildings change hands.
Foreign investors aren't likely to pull back from their acquisition campaigns, either. According to Jones Lang LaSalle, foreign investors spent $21.8 billion on U.S. real estate in 2005. Most of that total was poured into domestic office assets such as Manhattan's One Park Avenue. Last year, for example, German fund manager SEB Immobilien-Investment GMBH paid $323 million for that property.
For the industrial market, trade with China should continue to bolster traffic and occupancy demand at key ports. Congestion is such an issue at many West Coast ports that some traffic is being re-routed through the Panama Canal. As a result of this activity, industrial vacancy should drop to 8% by the end of 2006 (down from 9.6% at the end of 2005).
Offsetting that vacancy decline, however, new industrial construction will grow 20% this year as new distribution space is built to replace obsolete properties. Rental growth for industrial properties will increase by 3.8% for full-year 2006, which would make for flat rental growth between 2005 and 2006.
Investment sales volume, however, increased a full 65% to $34.5 billion between 2004 and 2005. The hottest markets for industrial space were Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas and Seattle—and these markets will continue to lure capital and occupancy demand through the end of this year.
Despite the addition of new space without sufficient leasing demand, retail vacancy rates should fall slightly through the end of 2006. Retail vacancy closed out 2005 at 8%, but vacancy will dip to 7.8% by the end of December. Net absorption is likely to hit 31.4 million sq. ft. this year, or down from 43.8 million sq. ft. last year. The retail markets that will post the lowest vacancy rates this year include San Francisco, Las Vegas, San Diego, Seattle and West Palm Beach, which will end this year with vacancies of 3.4% or less.


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It's not an exaggeration to say that the PC market has never been this bad. So much for the "PC-Plus" era that Microsoft (MSFT -0.31%) has been talking so much about lately; given IDC's most recent estimates on PC shipments, maybe "PC-Minus" is more appropriate.
Global PC units in the first quarter got absolutely crushed, falling by 14%. That's the biggest drop that the market researcher has ever seen in a single quarter in the nearly two decades that it's been releasing quarterly estimates. That's almost twice as bad as the already-reduced 7.7% decline IDC was expecting.
There were an estimated 76.3 million PCs shipped in the first quarter, down from 88.6 million units a year ago. IDC makes it very clear that Windows 8 played no small role in the precipitous drop. IDC's Bob O'Donnell notes, "At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market."
The new interface may be a bit too much for the average consumer to take in. After all, killing an interface element like the Start Menu that's been around for 17 years is a big risk. Plenty of Windows 8 users have expressed that they want the Start Menu back, even if that means downloading third-party alternatives.
There's also a growing perception that Windows 8 needs a touchscreen to be fully enjoyed. That's only partially true. While the operating system is definitely built around touch interface, it's also fully compatible with a good old-fashioned mouse and keyboard. Touch-based devices come at a premium price -- a price that consumers aren't willing to pay for a platform with so many trade-offs.
It doesn't help that the only two domestic PC giants left standing are undergoing identity crises. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ 0.17%) remains in turmoil, with its chairman just stepping down and continued debate over whether or not the company should be broken up. HP is also actively exploring other platforms from Google; the company has released both a Chromebook and Android tablet this year.
Dell (DELL.DL) is still trying to scare investors into selling the company back to Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners. The company's recent proxy statement lays out the gloomy state of the PC market, a not-so-subtle nudge to get investors to allow the company's founder to take Dell private. That's a major change in Dell's tone, since it used to talk up all its enterprise potential -- a discrepancy that Southeastern Asset Management has called out as it opposes the deal.
Chinese vendor Lenovo held up the best with 0% growth, while all other vendors in the top five saw double-digit declines. HP's shipments fell 24% to 12 million; Dell shipped 11% less units this quarter at 9 million.
Not even Apple (AAPL -0.41%) is immune from the downturn. While the Mac maker doesn't rank in the top five globally, IDC estimates that Apple's domestic Mac shipments declined by 7.5%. That's still outpacing the broader market, and there have been other indications that iMac shipments are roaring back as the company overcomes supply constraints, but it still doesn't bode well for future Mac growth. The saving grace for Cupertino is that Apple relies much less on the PC market than its rivals, with Macs comprising just 13% of trailing-12-month sales.
Still need more proof that the PC is dead as the preferred personal computing form factor?


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Fluke Industrial Products
Test Tools Catalogue
The book contains complete descriptions of features and specifications for Fluke's full line of test tools. Sections include handheld digital multimeters, basic electrical testers, ScopeMeters, installation testers, field calibration tools, power quality tools, clamp meters, digital thermometers, thermal imagers, insulation testers, EX test tools, portable appliance testers, indoor air quality tools and accessories.
Fluke Calibration
Process Calibration Tools Catalog
This catalog contains a full range of accurate, rugged and reliable calibration solutions for field and bench applications. Sections include a wide range of multifunction, mA loop, pressure calibrators, temperature calibrators and data acquisition products. Plus some 40 pages of examples of pressure and temperature applications.
Fluke Calibration Products and Services Catalog
This catalog is designed to give you an "at-a-glance" look at the wide range of products offered by Fluke Calibration: calibrators and standards, software, service support and training in electrical, temperature, pressure, RF and flow calibration.
EWS Mini catalog
This mini catalog contains the main product range for the electricians.
Sections include handheld multimeters, basic electrical testers, installation testers, clamp meters, insulation testers and a selection of the temperature solutions.


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This picture shows where Isidis Planitia is on Mars. The Mars globe on the left shows how Mars would look to your eyes if you were close to Mars. The globe on the right shows how high (or low) places on Mars are. Places that are high look red or orange on the right globe. Places that are low look green or blue on the right globe. You can see that Isidis Planitia is low because it is blue.
NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems and the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center


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Voting machine provider Hart Intercivic will be counting the votes in various counties in the crucial swing states of Ohio and Colorado and elsewhere throughout the country come Nov. 6 — even though it has extensive corporate ties to the Mitt Romney camp, and even though a study commissioned by the state of Ohio has labeled its voting system a "failure" when it comes to protecting the integrity of elections.
Reports of Hart Intercivic's ties to Romney first surfaced in late September, in a blog post by Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis in the Free Press, an Ohio website that reported that a key investor in Hart was HIG Capital, seven of whose directors were former employees of Bain & Co., a consulting company of which Mitt Romney was once CEO. (Romney left the company in 1984 to co-found a spinoff company, Bain Capital.) HIG Capital announced its investment in Hart on July 6, 2011, just one month after Romney formally announced the launch of his presidential campaign.
Nor were those the only ties between Hart and the Romney camp. Four of the HIG directors, Tony Tamer, John Bolduc, Douglas Berman and Brian D. Schwartz, are Romney bundlers along with former Bain and HIG manager Brian Shortsleeve, and, according to Opensecrets.org, a website run by the Center for Responsive Politics, HIG Capital has contributed $338,000 to the Romney campaign this year. Moreover, according to a reportin the Nation, HIG Capital is tied to the Romney family via Solamere, a private equity firm that has invested in HIG and is run by Tagg Romney, the candidate's son.
Solamere, however, has released a statement asserting that "Neither Solamere nor its principals have any ownership in the company or in the fund that owns the company."
A spokesman for Hart Intercivic, Peter Lichtenheld, vice-president of operations, confirmed that HIG was a major investor, but downplayed its role in Hart's management. "HIG Capital is an investor with Hart," Lichtenheld told Salon, "but it has nothing to do with management at Hart. We don't want the perception that we have some political agenda. We are in the election business and integrity is paramount."
In the event of a close election, however, the ties between the Romney family, their supporters and the voting machine company raise the specter of a potential conflict of interest and the memory of the controversy surrounding the 2004 election results in Ohio.
In that election, as I report in "Boss Rove," Democrat John Kerry had a 4.2 percent lead in the exit polls in Ohio, which would have given him the presidency. George W. Bush won the state by more than 2 points, however, and, as a result, kept the White House. But a civil suit subsequently alleged that the Ohio results were fraudulent because the Republican secretary of state of Ohio, Ken Blackwell, contracted with SmarTech, a Tennessee-based tech firm indirectly tied to Karl Rove, to serve as the "failover" site for election results in Ohio on Election Night.
At approximately 11:14 p.m. on that night, SmarTech did, in fact, link up with servers for Ohio's election returns. After SmarTech became part of the process, the Ohio returns were characterized by anomalies involving the tabulation of punch cards, electronic voting machines of various types, spectacularly high turnouts in pro-Bush precincts and turnouts in pro-Kerry precincts that were astoundingly low. Virtually all the irregularities favored Bush, and the vast majority of them remain unexplained.
When I questioned Rove about his relationship to SmarTech for my book, "Boss Rove," he told me, "I have no idea who SmarTech is."
He later added, "I am so many layers removed from that I wouldn't even know who those guys were."
Nevertheless, so many troubling questions about the 2004 election in Ohio remained unanswered that when Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner succeeded Ken Blackwell, she commissioned a study in 2007 called Project Everest to evaluate Hart and other voting systems in use in Ohio at the time.
Its conclusion? The Hart system performed "poorly" because unauthorized individuals could gain access to memory cards and "easily tamper" with core voting data, and Hart scored a "zero" on the 12-step baseline comparison because it "failed to meet any of the 12 basic best practices" necessary to have a secure system.
Lichtenheld said Hart has not upgraded its product since the Project Everest report but he attributed the harsh assessment of Hart's system to the fact that the people evaluating it "were given unfettered access." "There are many ways to compromise it given unfettered access," he said. "They had all the time in the world and didn't have to worry about security breaches."
In an interview with msnbc.com, former Secretary of State Brunner said that the threat of a politically-motivated attack on the system was now "very low" because Ohio put in place a comprehensive set of procedures to protect against security breaches and "to ensure that everything works as it should."
Whether those precautions will be enough remains to be seen. The Project Everest report asserted that the Hart system "lacks the technical protections necessary to guarantee a trustworthy election under operational conditions." Ultimately, it concluded with words that may prove haunting come Nov. 6: "The vulnerabilities and features of the system work in concert to provide 'numerous opportunities to manipulate election outcomes or cast doubt on legitimate election activities ... virtually every ballot, vote, election result, and audit log is 'forgeable or otherwise manipulatable by an attacker with even brief access to the voting systems.'"